Sightseeing in the Mindfields
Greece: The White Tower of Thessaloniki, 10 May 2025
August 28, 2025
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We flew from Crete, the southernmost island in Greece, to Thessaloniki, its northernmost mainland city. Thessaloniki is also known as Salonica, or Salonika. With a population of approximately one million, it is Greece’s second largest city, after Athens.
Thessaloniki is also the capital of the region of Macedonia, where the most famous member of...
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Greece: Westward in Crete to Chania, 9 May 2025
August 21, 2025
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I must praise the staff at the Hotel Galaxy Iraklio for its aid in arranging our car rental in Heraklion. Never did we obtain the temporary use of a vehicle with such ease.
HL was willing to drive our foursome to Chania, a harbor town 150 kilometers west of Heraklion, so that we could see more of the island than its major urban center. A study o...
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Greece: Crossing into Crete, 7 May 2025
August 13, 2025
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I had doubted that I should have much to write tonight, as this was the day when HL and I traveled from Athens to Crete.
It transpires that the hours not spent in transit were sufficient for me to form some initial impressions of Greece’s largest island.
The flight time from Athens to Heraklion was only 35 minutes. Technically, it was a domesti...
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Greece: The Archaeology of Theft, 6 May 2025
August 04, 2025
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The Acropolis Museum is a sleek, bright, modern venue for displaying the artifacts that have been recovered from the Parthenon and other ancient buildings on the Acropolis. The museum is directly opposite the Acropolis. The glass floor in the entryway revealed that the museum had been erected over an excavation of streets inhabited from pre-Classic...
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Greece: The Acropolis, 5 May 2025
July 28, 2025
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The Acropolis of Athens has been the symbol of the city since the Fifth Century BCE, Greece’s Golden Age under Pericles’ leadership. Pericles commissioned the architect Phidias to construct the Parthenon as a tribute to Athens’ patron goddess, Athena, after the Athenian forces defeated the Persian forces in battle.
There had been a citadel on the...
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Greece: The National Gallery, 4 May 2025
July 21, 2025
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Our Sunday in Athens began with a memorable sound rather than a sight. Not long after I rose, I heard liturgical singing from the street below my hotel room. I leaned out of the window to confirm that the source of the chant was the minuscule Orthodox Church across the street. Sunday services must have been concluding, and the rich harmony of voice...
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Greece: The Oracle At Delphi, 3 May 2025
July 13, 2025
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We rose early in order to tour Delphi, the site of the Temple of Apollo where the Pythia used to provide cryptic answers to the questions that the god’s worshippers asked of him. Delphi was one of a dozen oracles in ancient Greece. Its origins predate those of the pantheon familiar to us from Greek mythology, that temperamental family of deities ho...
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Greece: Space Exploration in Athens, 2 May 2025
July 07, 2025
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Until we arrived in Athens early on a May morning, neither HL nor I had ever been to Greece. We had traveled to some unusual and even alarming places, but not to the city that had enticed everyone from conquerors to consumers of package holidays since Classical times. Our hotel was in the Syntagma district, where a glance down any street reveals At...
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Dining on Nostalgia, with a Side of Whimsy: Philadelphia, April 2025
June 30, 2025
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Philadelphia has its share of gourmet restaurants, and HL and I were pleased to sample the cuisine in several of them while visiting with friends and family. My subject here, however, is a far humbler establishment, the Silk City Diner, in the Northern Liberties district. Its exterior was very similar to that of the diners of my youth. That, and th...
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A Faire on the Pier: Philadelphia, April 2025
June 23, 2025
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This most recent visit to the soi-disant City of Brotherly Love is one that will remain in my memory as a succession of grey, soggy days. Only our spirits were not dampened. Rather than stay indoors, we unfurled our umbrellas and ventured into the rain. We walked beside the Delaware River. Unsurprisingly, we encountered very few other pedestrians....
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